Spiritual Development and Material Expression
Back to The Release of the Material Creation
The rewards to the overcomer, as we understand them, are given as increments in the development of a ruling spiritual nature in us. The rewards to the overcomer may be considered additions of eternal life, authority, power, glory, union with God through Christ, and opportunities for service—spiritual additions that will express themselves in our material form in the Day of Christ.
Those who do not overcome the resistance that comes against them, who do not permit the Holy Spirit to create the ruling nature of Christ in them, will not receive the rewards "by grace."
The Kingdom laws of cause and effect, of sowing and reaping, hold true. The fullness of what was promised to man in the beginning will be given only to those in whom the ruling spiritual nature has been developed.
Gaining the rewards offered to the overcomer occurs in two stages:
Receiving the rewards in our spiritual nature now as we continue gaining victory through Christ over all creatures, forces, and things coming against us.
Receiving the rewards in our material body when Christ summons our body from the grave.
Receiving the rewards now establishes the development in our personality of a ruling spiritual nature.
Receiving the rewards in our material body in the Day of Resurrection establishes a material expression of the ruling spiritual nature that has been developed in our personality.
There is an important practical application of what has just been stated. It is that in the Day of Christ our material body will be raised from the dead and then transformed according to our state of spiritual development at that time. The current concept that we will be given bodies like the body of Jesus even though we are spiritually immature is a misleading, destructive idea.
If, in the Day of Resurrection, our material form were to become more full of Divine Life than is true of our spiritual nature (which would have been the case with Adam and Eve), or less full of Divine Life than is true of our spiritual nature, there would be chaos in the Kingdom of God. New wine must be put in new wineskins.
If our material form were to become more full of Divine Life than is true of our spiritual nature, we would have an example of what would have been true in Eden if Adam and Eve, in their undeveloped and condemned spiritual state, had eaten of the tree of life.
If, in the Day of Resurrection, our material form were to be less full of life than is true of our spiritual nature, we would experience a continuation of what is true today—a victorious, Christ-filled spiritual personality in an imprisoning body, a body that is a dead weight we drag around as we serve the Lord.
The perfect gift of the Day of the Lord is a resurrected material form that expresses completely and perfectly our spiritual nature.
The believer in Christ who does not press forward as a victorious saint will suffer incomprehensible loss in the Day of the Lord. His body will reflect what he is in spiritual personality. His spiritual nakedness will be revealed in the nakedness of his material form. He will not reveal in his resurrected body the life, the glory, the authority, the union with God and Christ that are true of the overcomer. His body will be as weak as his spirit, as far from Christ as his spirit, as lacking in glory as his spirit. As we sow, so shall we reap.
Let us think about what will be true when the physical body is raised from the dead.